Plot Synopsis: Picard tries to finish his old archaeology mentor’s monumental last expedition: solving a puzzle that leads Humans, Romulans, Klingons and Cardassians to the secret of life in this galaxy, revealing the origin of humanoid life.
Plot A and B Analysis: The teaser is interesting enough: Picard’s old archaeology professor, Galen, surprises him with a visit, shows him an extremely rare artifact from a long-extinct civilization, tells him he’s on an expedition and asks Picard to come with him. Plot A is about “the chase” there is no plot B. Galen doesn’t waste time trying to persuade Picard to leave the Enterprise and come with him for three to twelve months. Picard turns him down and it gets a little nasty, he abruptly leaves on a shuttle, which is then attacked and his mentor dies. Picard resumes his old mentor’s expedition. Turns out Galen was collecting DNA fragments from distant worlds, all of which have something in common and form a computer program. The ship runs to a couple of worlds trying to piece things together, where they run into the Cardassians, Klingons and even the Romulans. They finally put the program together and the results are underwhelming in this disappointing episode.
Favorite Scenes: Though this episode isn’t great, the early scenes with his old professor are pretty decent, such as when Picard turns him down and Galen unloads on him. The only hidden gem takes place in the 32nd minute, when the Klingon captain challenges Data to the equivalent of an arm wrestle–after losing he head butts him, which is pretty funny.
Use of Cast/Characters: Marina has great-looking hair in this episode, for some reason it just stood out to me. We do see her playing his counselor, which was last seen in the Chain of Command two-parter. We return to one of Picard’s interests, archaeology, and he gets some more character development as we learn more about his past. His description of his relationship with his mentor is telling: “I had a father, but he was like a father who understood me… I was like the son who understood him.” Beverly is involved in the plot and contributes to solving the puzzle. Worf doesn’t have much, but I guess he gets to blow up some Yridians. Riker, Geordi and Data get the least, each having perhaps one contribution to make. Each of the actors playing a captain does a pretty decent job, but nothing extraordinary. Normal Lloyd does do a very good job as Professor Galen. He’s a pretty extraordinary dude, started acting in the 1930’s and is still alive today at 106!
Blu Ray Version: Some shots of the planets look great, and the Cardassian transporter is gorgeous. Thees improvements and a couple of other less-noticeable touch-ups are welcome. There is a deleted scene where Beverly is collecting DNA samples from the non-Federation crew members, and Mot the barber is one of them. It’s mildly amusing, but not essential.
Nitpicks: Worf blows up the Yridian destroyer on accident. He’s too good to do that, it doesn’t make sense and is never explained.
Overall Impression: This episode does not lack for ambition, that’s for sure. Even as a 17-yr old I thought this episode was TNG’s attempt to explain why virtually all of Gene Roddenberry’s aliens are humanoid in shape. It’s like we are given an answer to a question nobody cares about; it’s scifi TV right before the age of CGI, the actors are human, deal with it. It is also meant to be a mystery-type episode, but TNG doesn’t do those well (e.g. Clues, Aquiel, A Matter of Perspective). It’s interesting enough to watch, but the underwhelming, weak ending makes things fall flat. I rate this episode 2.5 out of 5 stars.
Behind the Scenes/Trivia: By now we know all about M-class planets (Earth-like), but this is the first mention of an L-class planet: covered with vegetation, unexplored, no civilizations and no animal life. The Kurlan naiskos antique will be shown in the seventh season, so it doesn’t get completely forgotten, even making an appearance in the ST: Picard episode Remembrance. The Yridian destroyer was an original creation for this episode, instead of just recycling models from other episodes that TNG did a lot. The destruction of Indri VIII’s atmosphere being destroyed essentially used footage from True Q and reversed it. The Cardassian ships fire yellow/orange type phasers from now on, whereas in previous episodes they were purple. This episode was inspired by Carl Sagan’s novel Contact–it goes without saying “The Chase” suffers in comparison. Salome Jens plays the ‘ancient humanoid’, and will go on to play the Female Changeling in multiple episodes of DS9.
Missable/Unmissable? Miss it. The next one may be Riker’s single finest episode.