4x24 The Mind's Eye

[8.2/10] I am exhausted by mystery boxes. J.J. Abrams, director of two Star Trek films, popularized the term tantalizing the audience with some hidden surprise or twist just beyond the edge of the story, and I am sick of them. You only need to watch Westworld, or hell, season 1 of Star Trek: Picard to see the damage that can be done to a story out of a constant need to surprise the audience, or throw in some game-changing twist, or otherwise avoid putting your cards on the table.

“The Mind’s Eye” is the perfect tonic to that approach. Plenty of TNG episodes, and Trek stories writ large, hinge on solving a mystery. What’s that weird space anomaly? How do we escape that powerful ship? What’s afflicting the Enterprise this week? But this episode lets the audience in on the answer from the jump. The Romulans have kidnapped and brainwashed Geordi, turning him into a sleeper agent programmed to enact their agenda aboard Starfleet’s flagship.

Rather than diminishing the stakes or the tension of the episode, that knowledge only increases both. “The Mind's Eye” is filled with dramatic irony -- the audience knowing something the characters’ don’t. This disparity in information generates real tension, when not even Geordi knows the danger and threats he’s about to create, but the audience watches them grow closer and closer to fruition, unsure whether our heroes can save their friend and stop something terrible from happening in time.

I’ll confess, at first I wasn’t sure how the plot of the episode would come together. On the one hand, we witness Geordi’s kidnapping and conditioning. Nefarious Romulan agents are using his neural implants as a means to program him to kill on their behalf without him even knowing. On the other, we see the arrival of Klingon Ambassador Kell, there to assist in resolving a dispute between a Klingon governor and colony agitating for independence, and help quell rumors that the Federation is aiding the revolutionaries.

At first blush, these stories don’t have much to do with one another. But eventually it becomes clear that the Romulans intend to use Geordi to help sow dissent between the Klingons and the Federation. As Picard himself notes, the tenuous alliance between the two peoples is one of the few forces that can keep the Romulan Star Empire in check. So it makes sense for the conniving Romulans to surreptitiously attempt to drive a wedge between their adversaries and thereby weaken them.

The Romulans’ ploy works in the context of what we know about their group, the Klingons, and simmering political conflicts in the series. Granted, we’ve mostly seen Romulan mental manipulation in the guise of Riker’s false experiences with Barash in “Future Imperfect”, but Romulan agents enacting their own version of the Ludovico Technique tracks with their general duplicitousness in Star Trek lore and their allegory as opposing Cold War spies.

Likewise, we’ve seen signs of the rockiness of the Federation/Klingon alliance since season 1’s “Heart of Glory”. And a couple episodes back in “The Drumhead” we saw signs that some Klingons would prefer the combative Romulans to the peaceful Federation, and a few more are even willing to sabotage Starfleet to make it happen. Season 4 marks a period where TNG is more willing to build on past stories and its universe to tell stories, and it’s a treat to see how much that bolsters an episode like this one.

But the heart of “The MInd’s Eye” isn’t just a continuity cavalcade. It’s a paranoid thriller. The Next Generation goes full Manchurian Candidate (or, if you’re closer to my vintage, full Captain America: The Winter Soldier). There’s a thrill that emerges from the audience’s knowledge of a plot to kill key figures on the Enterprise and to undermine the fragile peace between the Federation and the Klingons, and the fact that this powder keg could blow at any minute.

The spark that could light the whole thing up is Geordi himself. We don’t get much of Geordi’s internal life here, the only major downside to the episode. But it’s still a deft choice to run this story through Commander LaForge. He’s a jovial, dutiful guy, which not only provides good reason for his colleagues not to suspect him as the culprit beaming Federation weapons down to the Klingon revolutionaries, but makes it all the more tragic to see his free will and decency overridden in the same of a dastardly plot.

The episode wrings both tension and pathos out of the fact that Geordi has no idea he’s being used this way. There’s a poetic irony from the fact that, unbeknownst to him, the brainwashed Chief Engineer is investigating his own malfeasance, sent to track down subterfuge that only he could have caused. We only get a little of this recursive cat-and-mouse game, but there’s a combination of excitement and tragedy that makes it compelling based on what the audience knows and what poor Geordi doesn’t.

Despite that disparity in information, “The Mind’s Eye” still manages to include a good twist! Ambassador Kell seems like a good dude. He expresses admiration for Picard. (A good way to get into any TNG fan’s good graces.) He tests Worf but ultimately offers gratitude and respect for how he disposed of Duras. He seems genuinely committed to the diplomatic process and preserving the peace between his people and Picard’s.

But like in so many good conspiracy thrillers, the seemingly noble and reliable ally is actually working against our heroes. It legitimately caught me off guard when Kell welcomes Geordi into his quarters and turns out to be his handler and manipulator rather than his target. The episode does a good job of playing with audience expectations like that. Building tension from LaForge approaching Chief O’Brien after having killed his holographic double in a simulation, or visiting the Ambassador at a point when the peace process is just getting back on track, only to find an organic way to divert from what the audience thinks will happen next.

From there, it’s a race against time to prevent the Romulan/Klingon plot from coming to fruition. The episode does a good job of seeding Data’s suspicions and the clues that something’s amiss, so that when he figures out what’s going on, the discovery feels earned. Likewise, Geordi’s mind-manipulated missions escalate as the episode proceeds, building to order to assassinate leaders to stir tensions between the Federation and the Klingon Empire that will result in death and maybe even war.

TNG cuts back and forth between Data getting to the bottom of the scheme while Geordi moves ever closer to fulfilling his secret orders, keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat as to who will finish their work in time. Even if the answer is obvious given the demands of network television, the editing and structure works to make these moments and converging efforts seem utterly intense.

Of course, Data saves the day and prevents the assassination in the end. The e-band waves and location logs point to Kell as the culprit, especially when he refuses to submit to a search, and there’s something satisfying about him being taken into custody by the very Klingon Governor he was trying to thwart and eliminate as part of his cause. Data arrives at an answer the audience already knows, but seeing the path to get there, what’s at stake if Geordi’s mission were to succeed, and Kell’s folly makes the truth spilling out a satisfying end to the adventure.

We even get just a taste of Geordi’s recovery, his sense of violation and self-certainty and frustration at having been used like this. It’s an important thing to include, adding just a touch of the personal and intimate to what’s otherwise a plot-heavy, conspiracy-minded instalment. At its best, TNG never forgot to include the impact of its grand events on the characters at the center of them, making them feel more real.

It’s the ultimate irony of “The Mind’s Eye”. The audience knows more about what’s happening in this assassination plot than the poor soul carrying it out. The episode still has its surprises and reversals. But it builds excitement and intrigue not on the unknown or hidden, but from the ominousness of anticipating that something terrible is about to happen. Crafting your story to stay engrossing without wild twists or hinted mysteries is harder and bolder than playing hide the ball and hoping for the best. Yet it’s a better way of spinning a tale worth the hype and drama that T.V. viewers crave, and it shows trust in an audience, invested enough to appreciate a story on its own merits, not just for its shocks or teases.

(Spoilers for later episodes: Is that supposed to be Sela’s voice we hear supervising Geordi’s conditioning from the shadows? It doesn’t look like her, but that seems to be the intention.)