“The Mind’s Eye” (4×24)
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This was another episode with a meaty storyline with larger implications that the show’s format isn’t equipped to handle.
Telling a Manchurian Candidate story with Geordi, one of the most guileless — even dorky — characters, is a smart way to take a character whose behavior is predictable and turn him into a dangerous wild card. And exploiting his disability to compromise him felt especially devious and repugnant. Taking that action, and pairing it with their exploitation of Klingon corruption, all felt very on brand for the Romulans.
I liked Larry Dobkin as the Klingon Ambassador, too. He is someone who is playing all sides, willing to do horrible things without any evident guilt or remorse.
I thought Marina Sirtis was terrific in the final scene, as Troi began Geordi’s deprogramming. We so rarely get to see her working in her area of expertise. Usually she’s just called upon to give vague and conveniently useless impressions of characters’ emotional states.
But that scene also gets to my problem with this episode: Deprogramming is a lengthy and imprecise process. There’s no way that Starfleet would allow an officer that it knew had been compromised by the Romulans to continue as chief engineer of its flagship if the constraints of the episodic format didn’t demand it.
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