TNG S3E18 "Allegience" Review By AnswerMan

Horrible:Meh:Adequate:Good:Fantastic

Picard is taken from the ship and placed into captivity, while a double of him is running the ship with the crew none the wiser. The double clearly has some aspects of Picard to him, as he knows stuff about things, but yet he's a little off. He interrupts poker to nag at Geordi about a 2% variance in efficiency. He buys everyone a round of ale and leads them in song (Geordi seems to be the only one that doesn't know the words). He schedules his annual physical a month early and without prompting. He makes a pass at Beverly, and he insists on steering the ship into certain death for no reason. Even though we know that this is not the real Picard, all of this is fun to watch. It's our captain, but without the filter. He cuts loose a bit, and let's face it, Picard could stand to cut loose sometimes.



But the real Picard is in some sort of holding cell with three others in an unknown location. There's him, the Coward, the Bully, and the Cadet. They spend most of their time fighting and accusing each other, and when they do actually work together their efforts are fruitless anyway. Eventually Picard solves the puzzle, and calls out the Cadet for being a phony because she knew too much about a classified mission that he mentioned. She is revealed to be an alien captor. It was all just a big experiment, and they will now all be returned to where they belong.

Back on the Enterprise, it all becomes too much for the crew when doppelgänger Picard is about to kill them with radiation. Riker takes command of the ship, and Worf takes Riker's lead and refuses to obey the captain's orders as well. Wesley looks perplexed, but knows that he doesn't want to die, so he follows Riker's order to reverse course. I was curious what would have happened if Riker had instead gave the order to Data. I have to think that he would not have followed it, as I'm sure mutiny is not in his programming.

Just then the real Picard returns with an alien. Imposter Picard is revealed to be an alien as well. They explain that they had taken him to study how command works. All of their race is in constant communication with each other through telepathy of some sort, so there is no need for a command structure. They also know how to completely duplicate a person, memories and all. Also that copy is not just a copy but actually another alien inside the copy. Oh and also the aliens have a completely irrational intolerance for being confined, but it had never dawned on them that other species may have a disdain for it as well. Though they are obviously the more advanced species, they are sort of laughed off at the end of this episode and basically told to just get out of here as if they were no threat.

Allegience is a fun Picard explorative episode. We get to see the double captain acting how we sometimes wish he would, while at the same time the true Picard is acting exactly as we expect him to by outsmarting everyone and solving the puzzle. The culminating scene on the bridge where he orchestrates the capture of the aliens without uttering a word is very satisfying after hearing the aliens talk down to him about only being able to communicate primitively with vocalizations. It's difficult to believe that the species could evolve to the point that they have without any moral code, especially since they make much of the fact that no one was harmed. Also, advanced communication methods aside, I really don't see how anything gets done without someone in charge.  It's all strange, but still Good enough to enjoy watching. I'm still not sure if steering the ship into oblivion to see if the crew would comply was a separate test they were running, or just ineptness on behalf of the double. Oh and, that room had no toilet, which I think would have been the most pressing concern.

Importance level: Quite Low

Published January 26, 2020