15 – 11001001

Grade: C-

Summary

The Enterprise goes to Starbase 74 to receive some upgrades and routine maintenance. It will also receive repairs to the holodeck, which has been malfunctioning. The repairs will be performed by the Binars, aliens who are computer experts and very fast programmers. But when Commander Riker finds four of them working together, he becomes suspicious of them.

Commentary

This episode isn’t horrible, I guess, but it’s not one of my favorites. Most of the episode is fine, though the scenes with Riker and Minuet were pretty cheesy. Then, with about 10-15 minutes left, it really goes down hill. It reminds me of several lame endings from the Animated Series. I don’t mean to ruin it for you, but the ending is really bad. It turns out that the Binars just needed to have the Enterprise save their main computer, and in turn, save their planet. These aliens are apparently so connected to their computers that when they crash, they also die. Pretty silly, if you’d ask me, and also very weak.

So these aliens create a holodeck character to distract Riker and keep him from leaving the ship, because they need to have someone still left on the ship in case there’s a problem later. It’s interesting they picked Riker for this task. I supposed they knew his reputation for falling for different women in several episodes so far this season. But really, I should be fair to Riker. He won’t be the only person in Starfleet to fall for a holographic character.

One thing that I thought was especially ridiculous is that Riker was so infatuated with this character that he couldn’t wait to get back to the holodeck to spend more time with her. And when he finds out that she’s no longer there, he returns to the bridge and sulks like a teenager who’s just been turned down for the prom. Riker, grow up. Besides, there’s a real woman on this ship who is every bit as remarkable and certainly more substantive who actually loves him for some inexplicable reason. He should come back to reality and stop falling for every woman he ever sees, even if she’s just a computer program.

Speaking of Deanna Troi, she isn’t even in this episode. Maybe that’s why Riker is so easily distracted by a computer simulation. What’s ironic is that one thing he likes about Minuet is that she somehow knows what he wants her to say even before he knows it himself. But Deanna Troi is a mind-reader and she’d know pretty much anything he’s thinking about all the time. So why would he find Minuet so remarkable?

Of Note

There’s a funny scene, about 9 minutes into this episode. Data is painting something, with Geordi’s “guidance.” Riker then says this is a moment that future historians would want to study – a blind man teaching an android how to paint.

Here’s an oops moment: When people are evacuating the Enterprise, they show Wesley Crusher and four other people beaming off the ship via one of the transporters. So there is one empty space that isn’t being used and dozens of people waiting their turn. Shouldn’t they have beamed down as many people as possible?