“Conspiracy” (1×25) & “The Neutral Zone” (1×26)
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Watched two first season episodes tonight, “Conspiracy” and “The Neutral Zone”. Man, I forgot how rough the show was back then. The cast chemistry wasn’t yet fully developed, and the writing was often stilted.
“Conspiracy”
One of those episodes that I saw as a little kid that’s stuck with me every since. The stinger sticking out of the back of the necks, and the bowls full of squirming larvae, were definite nightmare fuel. The creature horror, while tame by Alien standards, is still kind of shocking for this show. The idea of a parasitic lifeform taking over the Federation Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style is an intriguing one, but one with consequences too far reaching to really be suitable for a one-off standalone story. And none of the shows or movie ever followed up on the final beat, which implied that the parasites called in for reinforcements.
“The Nuetral Zone”
“The Neutral Zone” is a really odd combination of two stories that don’t really go with each other. The A-plot is this satire of the eighties cryogenics fad, with three oversized personalities from 1988’s conception of the early twenty-first century. It’s fine for what it is, but Trek has definitely done more exciting things with ancient humans discovered in a state of suspended animation. Leon Rippy’s addict musician is fun, but feels more like a TOS guest character than a TNG guest character. Ralph is a pretty unsophisticated critique of unchecked Reagan-era capitalism, while Clare is the only one of the three that is really easy to empathize with. Crusher casually resurrecting them all also flies in the face of later depictions of 24th century medicine — while medicine is far more advanced than today’s, the same roughly twenty minute timer of brain death usually still applies.
Even more perplexing: the major development of the episode, the return of the Romulans, is the secondary story. And the mysterious common enemy would seem to be the Borg, based on the description of what had happened to the starbases, but as far as I know Q’s interventions led to the first contact with the Borg. The writing is rough and out of character even by first season standards, too, starting with Riker dismissing out of hand the discovery of an ancient human spacecraft, and continuing with Picard chewing out Data for inconveniently saving some lives. On the plus side, Marc Alaimo’s brief appearance as one of the Romulans is a reminder of why he would later make such a good Big Bad for DS9.
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