“Symbiosis” (1×22)
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This episode was both a wacky, outrageous science fiction story and a very evocative artifact of the Reagan era of America’s War on Drugs.
I knew we were in for a wild ride when the Enterprise responds to an emergency hail from a doomed freighter, and the freighter’s captain is completely stoned, with only a vague idea of what’s going on.
We quickly learn that the system is home to two inhabited planets, each home to a different species with a common ancestor — similar to the Vulcans and the Romulans. Both species are humanoid, except with the ability to generate electricity and delivering controlled jolts. They have achieved space travel, with regular freight runs between the two inhabited worlds, and they are aware of other life in the galaxy. But they have not yet broken the warp barrier, so the Prime Directive still applies.
The Ornarans were once an industrious society that produced great feats of science and engineering. By contrast, their neighbors the Brekkians were an agrarian society with little industry of their own.
That all changed a couple centuries prior, when a plague ravaged both worlds. They found a treatment. But it required a plant that only grew in the richer and more fertile soil of Brekka. For all of their technological and scientific advancements, the Ornarans found themselves at the mercy of the Brekkians, who were the only source of the medicine that could keep their illness at bay.
It doesn’t take long for Dr. Crusher to discover that the plague was eradicated a long time ago. The illness that plagued the Ornarans was actually just withdrawal symptoms from the heavy duty narcotics in the Brekkians’ “treatment”. Ornaran is planet where basically every man, woman, and child is a heroin addict.
Picard feels bound by the Prime Directive not to reveal this information to the Ornarans. The smug and self-serving Brekkians think they have him over the barrel, until he uses their manipulation of the Ornarans against them.
There’s a strange tension between the prime directive’s imperative to avoid cultural contamination and interference and the writers’ desire for anti-drug moralizing.
The consequences of Picard withholding the needed parts for the Ornarans’ freighter ships is essentially planetwide suffering for two entire planets: The Ornarans will suffer an extremely traumatic global withdrawal. And they have no way of knowing that they are experiencing withdrawal that can be overcome if it is endured long enough. So many of them are likely to commit suicide rather than endure what they have every reason to believe is a miserable, painful death.
Meanwhile, the Brekkians have so successfully indentured the Ornarans through their drug dependency, they are no longer in the business of any industries other than the manufacture and distribution of narcotics. They depend on the Ornarans for everything else. The Brekkians will be cut off from their supply of all essential goods once the Ornanans’ remaining ships break down. Global famine and mass death from starvation is almost certain.
And Picard lectures Crusher smugly about the moral correctness of his stance, despite the fact that Crusher was able to synthesize a Methadone-style treatment that would allow the Ornarans to treat their withdrawal symptoms while weaning themselves off the narcotic. He wants to avoid engaging in colonial paternalism. She wants to upload her Hypocratic Oath to “do no harm.”
One gets the sense that part of why the episode left the Ornarans to suffer came out of the same moral impulse that has resulted in such controversy around states’ programs to make Narcan readily available to the public to treat overdoses in the face of the ongoing opioid epidemic. These policies tackle addiction as a disease that requires treatment. But those who perceive addiction as a moral failing don’t perceive these strategies through the same lens. They regard any strategy that involves easing withdrawal symptoms, providing clean needles, or counteracting overdoses as tolerating and enabling the moral failing.
And if the Very Special Episode messaging wasn’t clear enough, the whole story grinds to a halt at one point for a comically earnest conversation between Wesley Crusher and Tasha Yar about the dangers of drug use and how important it is to Just Say No.
Impacts on Star Trek Continuity:
A “Lower Decks” episode explores the aftermath of the events of this episode, when the USS Cerritos revisits the system nearly two decades later. In the third season episode “Trusted Sources”, we learn that Picard’s gambit was successful in freeing them from their dependence on the narcotic, but it took them ten to fourteen years of chaos in order to get there. On the other hand, without the Ornarans’ supplies and technology, the Brekkians found themselves in an extremely vulnerable position. The Breen Confederacy seized upon their weakness invaded and conquered Brekka. So when it comes to rolling the dice on noninterference, you win some and you lose some I guess.
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