TNG S6E18 "Starship Mine" Review by AnswerMan

Horrible:Meh:Adequate:Good:Fantastic

The crew is being evacuated from the Enterprise so that a docking array can perform a baryon sweep. I guess starships accumulate baryon radiation and every now and then it has to be eliminated. So a beam slowly crosses the entire ship, zapping out that pesky baryon. Unfortunately for the crew, while this is happening, a reception has been planned with a particularly annoying host. Worf, rather wisely, asks to be excused from the reception, and smiles broadly as LaForge's request for the same treatment is denied. It's a clever moment. Also clever is Data working on his small talk, and being paired up with the irritating man to practice. Together they try to one-up each other with trivia, laugh obnoxiously, and generally carry on about nothing at all. I particularly enjoyed this stab at how banal small talk really is, as this is a particular pet peeve of mine. I usually opt for sarcasm to illustrate my disdain for chatting without purpose. I'll say "How was your weekend? Did you have a good weekend? Not long enough, eh? Did you do anything interesting? Did you get anything accomplished? Did you get to relax at all? Well, if I don't see you, have a happy new year!" without ever giving the person a chance to answer.

Picard escapes into his own introversion when he hears that there are horses he can ride. He returns to the ship to retrieve his saddle. Yes, he keeps a saddle on the ship, and the absurdity of this particular plot device becomes a bit of a running gag throughout the show. While on board, he finds out that there are actually people on the ship. In fact one of them is played by Tim Russ, who would of course later play Tuvok on Voyager. Somehow, he looks better with the pointy ears. Picard subdues the man using, ironically, what looks like a Vulcan neck pinch. He tries to transport off the ship before power is cut, but he just misses it. Which.... you wouldn't want to use the transporter one second before power is cut, right? Wouldn't you just get trapped in the pattern buffers and never rematerialize anywhere? Soon enough, Picard is captured by the others. Since he is out of uniform (instead dressed in layers like a homeless person), he pretends to be the barber. He finds out that they are there to steal some toxic space waste. He is horrified to discover that they are not terrorists, just thieves that are in it for profit. As if using the harmful space poison on people would somehow be better than just flipping it for a buck.


Meanwhile back at the reception, the rest of the main characters are taken hostage by accomplices to the bandits when LaForge notices some odd energy readings coming from a fruit bowl. Irritating man is killed, and LaForge is gravely injured. They very annoyingly try to be discrete by holding entire conversations about plans to overturn their captors without looking at each other. Ok, they're all in the same small room, no matter how nonchalant they are, the bad guys should have some idea that they're up to something, right? Well at any rate, it works as Crusher technobabbles LaForge's visor to knock out everyone but Data, giving him the opportunity to reverse their situation.

Back on the ship, Picard has escaped his captors and become a cross between MacGuyver and Die Hard. He's making flash bombs from household items, poisoning arrows, and sporting a manly crossbow. All the while he's picking off the bad guys one by one. With the deadly to human baryon sweep beam inching closer and closer, Picard and the remaining not-terrorists find themselves in Ten-Forward. The leader greedily kills off her help, and then beams onto a ship. However, after their scuffle, Picard holds in his hand the device that keeps the space goo stable, and the getaway ship explodes. He then radios to the station to stop the sweep, seconds before he would be killed by the beam. Wait! If that's all it took, why didn't he try radioing for help before?

"Starship Mine" is an Adequate episode. I like the idea of a laser beam cleansing the ship of toxins molecule by molecule, even if this is a process that lacks continuity with what we know. I also like the idea of Picard against a whole gang of bank heist type characters. He outwits them, because he knows his ship better than they do. Cutting off the rungs to the ladder in the Jeffries tube to Ten-Forward was cunning, and was a welcome simple tactic to get the upper hand in a situation, quite different from the normal technological methods. There were some moments that didn't make much sense though, like the aforementioned contact with the array controllers, and the fact that the thieves knew Picard by name but didn't recognize him. The crew on the planet created some great comic relief when Data was chatting it up, but they also created some extra cringe-worthy moments after they became hostages. That entire sequence was horrible and unnecessary. Also, what was hidden in the desert tray?

Published February 4, 2018