Plot Synopsis: Geordi La Forge falls in love with a woman accused of murder in an isolated communication relay station. The Enterprise crew investigates the crime; the only other suspect is a Klingon officer who frequently visited the station.
Plot A and B Analysis: The brief teaser sets up a little mystery. The Enterprise is delivering supplies to a remote relay station but nobody responds to hails so Riker, Geordi and Beverly beam over. The place is a mess. They find a dog and a smear that is the remains of a dead officer, probably Aquiel Uhnari, and a missing shuttle. Plot A is about the mystery of what occurred on the station, there is no plot B. Geordi starts sifting through Aquiel’s logs looking for clues, while on the ship Beverly investigates the scant remains of the officer. Turns out a Klingon was on the station, and since the station is close to the Klingon border they suspect foul play. The Klingon governor refutes this by producing Aquiel. Her story is that the senior officer attacked her and she had to defend herself and fled in a shuttle, but as the plot progresses she begins to look like the prime suspect in whatever happened on the station, and she starts flirting with Geordi. In the 35th minute things go sideways in sick bay, and from there on to a disappointing finish. Similar to A Matter of Perspective, structurally this episode makes sense but the execution is very flawed.
Favorite Scenes: I’m usually very good at remembering lines from individual episodes, but there are only two I remembered from this one. The first is that Aquiel had ‘”questionable taste in literature.” The other quote is from Worf when he’s fed up with the Governor’s posturing and says disdainfully, “Have the courage to admit your mistakes.” I do remember that weird pink gel turning into Beverly’s hand, it was nice and weird.
Use of Cast/Characters: At this point Picard knows how to handle Klingons. When the governor gets all grumpy and defensive Picard just apologizes and mentions Gowron’s name, which eases the way considerably. Other than this he doesn’t do much. Riker investigates the mystery, and he is involved but gets no character development. Deanna has one word to say in the episode (“Concerned?”), Data has two lines. Worf does a little, but other than one nice line he doesn’t have much. This is Geordi’s episode, and his main roles are investigating the logs and developing a love interest in Aquiel. It is implied he sleeps with her. Beverly investigates her mystery, which is the cellular residue, and is instrumental in solving it which is nice. Renée Jones plays Aquiel and sums up herself in two lines: “I’m not a model officer, I realize that. Sometimes I act on impulse instead of thinking things through.” She does a decent job overall, but there isn’t much chemistry between her and Geordi. The forgettable Klingons are jerks in this episode.
Blu Ray Version: The remains of the coalescent organism reacting to Beverly’s hand was redone to look a bit better than the original, which was nice. Not much else.
Nitpicks: Is it bad that when anyone says “Governor Torak” I hear “Governor toerag”? In the 20th minute things are wrapping up with the Klingons, and Aquiel is obviously cut and lacerated and doesn’t remember what happened to her. Why doesn’t she have to report straight to sick bay for an examination? In the 26th minute Picard orders Riker to examine the missing shuttle they recovered and I thought, “yeah, shouldn’t you guys be doing that already?” It’s a murder investigation! Seeing Geordi flop and fall around the room in the 42nd minute is a little embarrassing to watch.
Overall Impression: This episode is a pock mark on an otherwise sterling and pretty flawless season. Alright, it’s the second pock mark. Okay, the third. This episode is so forgettable I honestly forgot that Klingons were in it. It’s also another example of Geordi being unlucky in love. This episode maintains some mystery and tension, but I found myself waiting for the episode to get good and it never did. The ending is a significant disappointment as well. I mean, come on. The dog?! I rate this episode 1.5 out of 5 stars.
Behind the Scenes/Trivia: I’ll state the greatest irony first: this was the most-watched episode of season six! I am dead serious. When asked what he would have done differently in his time on Star Trek Moore stated that he would not have written Aquiel. It was supposed to be a riff on the outstanding classic film Laura, where the detective falls in love with the photograph of a woman, and then she walks through the door and may be the killer. Ron said, “It turned out terribly. We thought we had such a great idea, Geordi falls in love with this girl who everyone thinks is a shape shifter, and the secret is that it’s the dog. It’s the dog!” The Blackwater novel series that Aquiel mentions is a conflation of the book Cold Moon over Babylon and the Blackwater series, Southern Gothic horror novels written by Michael McDowell back in the 80’s. They are supposed to be really good, Stephen King loved the guy. The dude also wrote the screenplay for Beetlejuice.
They used CGI for the monster and Ronald B Moore (the visual FX coordinator, not the writer) hated how the monster turned out. CGI at that time just took forever and by the time he got the stuff from the CGI guys there was no time to fix it, so it just looks like a big Mr Peanut. Renee Jones was a well known soap opera actress from Days of Our Lives. Don’t know why anyone would care about that.
Missable/Unmissable? I think it goes without saying: missable. The next one is the best Troi episode ever.