LogFAQs > #969664263

Episode 17: Home Soil

Back to a mostly good episode. Halfway decent mystery involving a new form of life.

Picard has some wonderful moments, like suggesting that the real question to be asked is "why?" and bowing before the scientific method. Wears his diplomat hat and is quite understanding of Mandl's mistake.

Riker gets to be friendly and flirty. Definitely new Kirk. He's back in audience surrogate mode, so, that the principles of terraforming can be explained. Like most characters, he's enamored with the beauty of the lifeform and seems tearfully reluctant to let it go.

La Forge has a gorgeous moment of likening the creature's flashing to music, which is all the more brilliant coming from a blind man. Burton seems to have settled into the role to such a point that, like Frakes, it looks like he's just happy to be here.

Yar takes charge of her security role as expected. During the conversation in the observation lounge, Crosby gives a few decent expressions to convey anger at the neglect the scientists were showing.

Worf makes for a good source of sarcasm and its nice to see him play an active role in events.

Crusher approaches her work with a determined zeal in her eyes. It's sort of nice to see her apply the scientific method.

Troi is back to her old tricks of exposition people's emotions, although Sirtis is getting better at acting her own subtle reactions alongside it. I truly do admire how the show treats it as obviously self evident that the lifeform is beautiful and Troi is probably the best person to communicate that. Gives a slightly viscous insult to Riker at one point.

Data is clearly mulling over the possibilities of life when he's inspecting the drill. I did expect more of a deeper role from him, considering inorganic life if the prime concept.

Wesley hangs around like a bad smell. I almost didn't register his presence until he was given a token line.

The terraformers don't inspire much thought, despite Mandl's attempts at injecting some nuance into the role. Bensen is the worst of the bunch. I'm not convinced his actor is even trying to earn his pay.

Giving the silicon entity a sentence to itself just so I can gush at how great a line "ugly bags of mostly water" is.

The terraforming building is a great design and has something of a gloomy edge to it. For something that spends most of its screen time as a point of light, the silicon lifeform has a surprising beauty to it and I liked that it's appearance subtly evolved after every division. Directing was mostly great, with one brilliant example being Picard's group in the lab observing the creature on the screen, only for Worf to hove into view and reveal that the bridge group are looking at the same thing.

Some problems, though. Pacing is, frankly, weird. Aside from spinning their wheels in a mostly obvious mystery, there are bizarre moments like the entity trying to communicate, the crew retiring to the observation lounge to discuss the attempt and, then, only trying to listen to it. Another one is, after it's clear that the entity has control over the computers, La Forge still tries to use them, only to obviously fail.

The biggest bit of tedium comes from the relentless exposition. It's not even awful exposition, since it comes from reasonably accurate scientific thought, but it does drag and nobody is able to invest a great amount of emotion in it. I always feel slightly weird saying this, since I'm currently a physics student, but I've never been too bothered about my Sci-fi, even hard Sci-fi, being scientifically accurate. I'd rather have decent character work, thematic development or good old emotional stirring than painstaking world building. Supporting the scientific method is something I'm all for, but the absolute fealty shown to it in this episode gets in the way of telling the story and betrays that there isn't much plot to begin with. It's telling that almost nobody seriously doubts that the creature is alive. Instead, they spend most of the runtime trying to make a silicon based lifeform that vaguely resembles brain cells seem plausible. Consider the season started with a snotty man child god and shape-shifting space jellyfish, it seems counterintuitive to start working for believability now.

I've always seen Sci-fi as more of an aesthetic flavour that can highlight specific points other genres can't, but which is ultimately derived from a more universal sort of story telling. So, willing suspension of disbelief has never been a big issue for me. The fact that I'm playing at being critical here (even if my reach may well be exceeding my grasp) shows that I'm under no illusions that this is a viable alternate universe in its own right, but rather a vehicle (both metaphorically and literally, given the Enterprise) for telling stories. Less a meticulously maintained canon with deep lore and more a pseudo mythology that tells mostly disconnected stories with a familiar set of characters. (Incidentally, this is why I will probably wind up liking Wesley before the show is over, since it's been made clear to me that he does improve. I recognise that Wesley is not a real person with his own consistent timeline, but a sequence of interpretations stemming from an ever changing production team. As such, I can forgive a character a bad episode or even a run of bad episodes, so long as they do get a good one somewhere).

The actual theme is, of course, the same as The Devil in the Dark and I don't have too much to add from my review of that, except that this is something of a natural evolution from that episode, since the silicon entity is, at first glance, less obviously alive than the Horta.

An enjoyable, but slightly mediocre, episode with a great point. Absolute godsend after yesterday, though.

Tomorrow is the Coming of Age.