TNG S2E17 "Samaritan Snare" Review By AnswerMan

Horrible:Meh:Adequate:Good:Fantastic

I shall call this episode "Dumbasses In Space" from here on out. Our crew encounters the dumbasses seconds after dropping off Picard and Wesley at a space station. Wesley is doing teenager in Star Fleet stuff, and the captain...well, we don't exactly know and he's doing his best to keep it a secret. The dumbasses, who speak broken English, are pudgy, and as Riker says "seem a bit slow" have tricked  LaForge into coming on board, where they plan to keep him because he's so smart. It seems that they are aware of their cognitive limitations, so they look for things that make them go, which in this case is a chief engineer from the flagship of Star Fleet.



The gimmick of the dumbasses talking funny gets old really quickly. Plus it's impossible to get too concerned with LaForge being held by them when it's clear that our crew will get prevail due to superior intelligence, weapons, and technology. The situation is just never threatening, nor is it comedic enough to be worth the hassle. Sure enough, they hatch a plan to pretend to abandon LaForge in a cringe-worthy scene where Riker, Data, and Worf say goodbye to him in a way that is obviously laden with code. It's all very dumb. The only redeeming factor is that the dumbasses are a perfect example of why the Prime Directive exists. These are a species that obtains technology that is above their heads, and this is an example of why that is a bad idea.

Meanwhile we learn that Picard is having his defective artificial heart replaced, which is something that he desperately doesn't want anyone to know about. So naturally, he tells Wesley, completely unprompted. He briefly describes the events of Tapestry, which is a much better episode. He was young and dumb and got stabbed by physically superior aliens that he picked a fight with. As a result, he nearly died and has an artificial heart.

Picard felt it inappropriate to have the simple procedure done on board the Enterprise, because he doesn't want everyone all up in his business. So instead it's done by a team of oddly-dressed apparent cult members on the space station. Naturally, everything goes wrong, and the only person that can save him is Pulaski. When he wakes up to see her over his bed (and apparently she has joined the cult), he is pissed. But not as pissed as when the bridge crew applauds when he returns to take his chair.

It's never really explained why Picard sees nearly getting killed in a bar fight with several Naussicans as such a weakness, or why he has such a particular disdain for Pulaski, who seems to be uniquely qualified to perform his surgery. Although Wesley tells him that he would have made a great father, really Picard comes off like quite the jerk in this one. The viewer is waiting for a moment of redemption, where the tough exterior of the mysterious captain is chipped away at, but it never happens. He opens up to Wes just a bit, but only out of boredom. In the end he quotes Mark Twain regarding the rumors of his near-death in order to stifle the response of those that care about him, but we the viewer know that this is actually a lie. He did almost die as a youngster, and he did almost die again. But neither event have given us any further insight into the man. Poorly done on this one, Star Trek. Both the A and B plots suck, and nothing is gained here. "Dumbasses In Space" is a Horrible episode.

Also, Wes and Picard have sandwiches, and Picard talks with his mouth full. Gross.

Published April 8, 2018