Summary
While taking shore leave on an Earth-like world Wesley runs afoul of the locals’ harsh and random laws. In orbit above a vessel populated by powerful beings threatens the Enterprise if it interferes with its “children” on the planet below. Picard has to go down and sort things out by convincing the god entity that its laws are dumb and then beaming away with Wesley.
Observations
I have a lot of observations about the Prime Directive in this one that will all go under nitpicks.
Troi is reading Crusher’s mind when she comes in to tell the captain something. I believe this is an HR issue.
This planet is full of wild perverts, apparently.
Everyone is excited to head down to this planet and wet their wicks.
The people are called the Edo and they are all white and blonde. This is where the whole hep galaxy would be hanging out if the Nazi’s had won the war.
Troi gives Riker a look while he’s embracing an Edo woman. Is she reading his mind? Couldn’t be. She’d probably be gagging.
The lady wonders what the “custom” is for greeting younger humans. Wesley suggests they just do what they normally do. Something tells me their normal greeting custom is akin to Greco-Roman fucking.
The exteriors at least appear to be on-location and not a cheap studio set. That’s an improvement over previous episodes.
The male Edo outfits appear to be quite… restrictive. Dance belts all around!
The Enterprise bridge is visited by Glenda the Good Witch.
Watching these fools all run around in these skimpy outfits; I can only imagine how many exposed titties Will Wheaton saw while filming this episode.
Worf likes rough sex. Doesn’t he date Troi later in the series? He marries Jadzia Dax in DS9.
Worf was much more Klingon-esque in this first season. He definitely lightened up by DS9.
Worf is really put off by punishing legal transgressions with death. Isn’t he Klingon? Don’t they kill each other for any petty grievance?
Crusher is analyzing Data for signs of consciousness after he’s mind-raped by the bubble creature. Can her medical tricorder pick any of that up? Shouldn’t they get someone from engineering? Picard even suggests taking him to sick bay. Don’t they have a garage they could take him to? Put him up on the lift?
Gates Mcfadden’s acting is God awful. It must be the direction, she’s not like this in later episodes.
Capital punishment is no longer a justifiable deterrent in the Federation. This is consistent with TOS when in the episode The Menagerie Spock says there is only one crime still punished by death in the Federation, and that is visiting Talos IV… which is weird, but it means no other crimes result in execution.
Data: “Would you choose one life over one thousand, sir?” Picard: “I refuse to let arithmetic decide questions like that.” – classic Picard. Not to be confused with Movie and Picard series Picard, who is a vengeful, murderous, selfish, monstrous, psychopath.
People sure do like calling Wesley “the boy”. Thank God he’s not black.
Data is chatting with Troi and smiling as the crew comes back. It has been established that he has no emotions.
This really comes off as a recycled TOS script… and a bad one at that.
Nitpicks
I was unaware of how well the Prime Directive had been established by this episode, so I was hesitant to nitpick on it too hard. However, near the end Picard states that the Prime Directive prevents Starfleet from interfering in other worlds. This planet is very clearly not as advanced as the Federation. They don’t have warp capability, they don’t even seem to be space faring. The Enterprise crew should never have made contact with this world in the first place. Everything that transpires after this point is moot. They already violated the Prime Directive by being there. They can’t make it any worse by bailing out with Wesley.
The core idea of the episode is fine: Enterprise crew cross some hard to understand laws and must convince the locals that these laws are savage. Throw in some speeches about how the law shouldn’t be black and white and how capital punishment is wrong and you’ve got yourself an old fashioned morality tale. Just make the people they are encountering more advanced. It comes off like a bunch of conquistadors encountering the Aztecs and lecturing them on how fucked their laws are.
Armchair Screenwriter 