TNG S2E11 "Contagion" Review By AnswerMan

Horrible:Meh:Adequate:Good:Fantastic

The Enterprise goes into the neutral zone to help its twin sister, but it's too little too late, as the random malfunction affecting that ship cause it to explode before their eyes. Upon reviewing the logs, Picard figures out that their captain had discovered the mythical land of the Iconians, a race of people rumored to be able to appear out of thin air wherever they wanted. Hold that thought for a moment.

Just like always, what killed everyone on the other ship is now happening on the Enterprise. Any and all systems have gone sporadically wonky. So they head to the Iconian planet in order to investigate. Since this series of events is very loosely linked to archaeology, Picard demands to lead the away team, and takes Data and Worf with him. On the planet they discover the remains of a technologically advanced society. Data fires up some equipment, which is not even dusty.



Meanwhile, Riker is sparring with the Romulans, who also are suffering ship wide systems failures. On Troi's suggestion, Riker decides to prepare the crew for evacuation to the planet. Not because this is a perfectly logical thing to do when you know that your ship is eventually going to explode, but rather because this busy work will occupy the minds of the crew and keep them from freaking out. Then he puts Troi in charge of the evacuation, because the logistics of preparing 3000 people to simultaneously leave a ship is clearly best suited to ship's counselor.

Back on the planet, right next to the globe with a dick drawn on it, Data is learning the Iconian's language. He thinks he's got the gist, and states that he's about to engage "manual over-ride." Instead he fires up the thingamajig that allowed the Iconians to appear in various places. He states that this was not manual over-ride. Then he punches some more buttons, and gets zapped by a lightning bolt that shoots out of the dick drawing. He is severely damaged. Picard realizes that they are not going to be able to secure this facility, and that they can't risk the Romulans gaining access to the technology, so he unilaterally decides to blow it all up. He must have learned that in archaeology school. Data, who is mortally wounded, is somehow able to walk Picard through the precise procedure to cause an explosion, despite the fact that his only experience with the equipment is first performing a wrong function, and then getting himself killed. The scene has a very "Spock's Brain" feel to it. In my opinion, Data acted very out of character and recklessly from the moment that they appear on the planet, and once he is damaged just becomes comical. Worf carries Data (I thought he was extremely heavy?) through the tele-porter to the Enterprise, while Picard futzes with the buttons and says he'll jump through to whatever random place the tele-porter is displaying at the time to save himself.

After LaForge looks at Data, he pieces everything together. The Iconian scanner sends software that re-writes computer programs. The other ship's systems were all affected simultaneously, because they allowed the orb to scan them. But for the Enterprise and Romulans, they only got it by downloading logs from the ill-fated ship, and therefore the program has to slowly work its way through each system. That last bit makes no sense, but the rest of it actually does, as does the solution. I think this is one episode of Star Trek that the technobabble solution isn't really technobabble at all (although I wonder what people in the pre-internet time of 1988 when this originally aired would have thought). Though the word "virus" is never used (but hinted at in the title), that's what it is. A program is sent to the ship's computer that re-writes its code and messes everything up. The same thing happens to Data, and eventually he shuts down. But then he boots back up, with his memory gone from the moment that he was infected to the present. His systems were smart enough to recognize the threat, and revert back to an earlier, unaltered version of his operating system. This is exactly how you would fix a particularly nasty virus on your own computer. You simply go back to a restore point that is before you went to the sketchy website that infected you. It's a solution that makes total sense for once, and when the crew applies it to the ship's computer, everything goes back to normal.

Oh by the way, where did Picard end up? On the Romulan ship, of course. He beams out just before being taken captive, and the crew of the Enterprise are kind enough to share with the Romulans how to fix their systems before warping back to Federation territory. However, the Romulans have already said twice that they set the auto-destruct and there's no way to reverse it.

"Contagion" is merely a Meh episode of Trek.  It's not a bad story really, but some of the execution is questionable. There's just so many stupid moments, like Polaski having to explain what a splint is to another doctor, Wesley's whiny heart-to-heart with the captain, Riker and Troi's busy work scheme, an "action sequence" with LaForge where he gets tossed around a turbolift, and the whole ridiculously idiotic segment with Data on the planet. These moments take away so much from the story that I had a hard time enjoying it, even though it was a plot that mostly made sense.

Published July 4, 2018