7x23 Emergence

[4.7/10] I hate accusing writers of laziness. As much as we romanticize the profession, it’s still a job, and I’m sure there’s days they feel more motivated and inspired, and days where they’re mentally spent and still have to crank something out on a deadline. But I have confidence that most writers try their best and put effort into even the most disappointing hour of television you or I have watched.

And yet, it’s hard to watch an episode like “Emergence” and not wonder if the writers’ room was suffering from a case of senioritis. This episode isn’t bad, exactly. But it’s boring, with a palpable sense of being unbuilt and underdeveloped. It’s not hard to imagine the scribes on staff looking to the end of the series and running out of ideas, or at least the energy to build them out into complete, compelling stories.

You can practically hear the chatter in the room for this one. “Uh, so....what if the Enterprise was like...alive and smart all of a sudden?” “Sure, that could work. Why though?” “I don’t know, it just is, and it’s like...trying to make a little space baby.” “A space baby? Like a miniature version of the ship?” “No, no, no, more like a bundle of glowing crazy straws.” “I...see. And how does the crew factor in?” “They’re...uh...on a train in the holodeck, because the holodeck is the ship’s ‘imagination.’” “And the train is the ship?” “Well, sort of. Except they have to talk to like, cowboys and knights and stuff to get things back to normal. I don’t know. What do you think?” “I think it’s time to go to lunch.”

“Emergence” feels like that sort of half-formed idea that nobody bothered to hone any further. There’s no real character motivations in the story; it’s purely a technical problem. The rules and details of how the quasi-sentient ship got that way and how its “brain” and “imagination” work now are either overly-obvious or too vague. There’s not even much in the way of stakes. It’s obviously important for Picard and company to gain control of their ship back, but all the self-aware wants to do is travel to a star and siphon some cosmic energy, so there’s little in the way of peril.

I’ve said of many bad or disappointing episodes in the past that they feel as though they’re another draft or two away from being good. But plenty of bad episodes take big swings and fail. This one takes no swings. It’s more like ten drafts away from being good. It scans like they decided to film a basic outline written on the back of a cocktail napkin. It’s too incomplete and formless to be bad, more like Trekkian wallpaper than a full-fledged episode.

The closest thing to a point the episode delivers comes at the very end, when Data questions why Picard let the ship pursue its quest despite the risk of danger or malevolence. For one thing, it’s nice to see Picard recognize the value and importance of new and unfamiliar life once again, treating the ship as a valid lifeform much as he did for Junior in “Galaxy’s Child”, and the Crystalline Entity, and even Data. There’s an openness to and protectiveness of living things in the captain that’s remained a distinctive trait from the beginning of the series.

More to the point, he tells Data that the ship’s mysterious ability to achieve sentience (which is never mentioned or discussed ever again, mind you) means it’s a product of all that the crew has put into it. It’s a product of their logs, their deeds, and their choices. So Picard was willing to trust it like he trusts his crew to behave with decency and honor. The episode does next to nothing to dramatize that idea until that final scene -- it’s not as though the ship displays any altruism or kindness really -- but it’s a nice thought at least.

Otherwise, “Emergence” squanders the one decent gimmick it has -- illustrating the psyche of a sentient being via the holodeck. The twin concepts of a mishmash of everyone’s favorite holodeck programs and the result being an interactive allegory for the functions and processes of the brain has a lot of far out potential. Like matching wits with Moriarty or diving into Data’s dreams, using the holodeck to experience a more surreal and liminal space could be a boon.

Instead...it’s a train. The train has people in various Halloween costumes with stereotypical personas. There’s a train conductor, a 1920s gangster, a wild west cowboy, a medieval knight, etc., etc., etc. With all the imaginative power of the holodeck, the writers come up with...the clearance section of Spirit Halloween store. Not even the Big Lebowski himself can turn such a dull realization of the concept into something worthwhile.

The mechanics of how the train and its inhabitants stand in for various ships functions and impulses is plain and uninteresting. Our heroes seem oblivious to the constant symbolism of the Windows 3D Pipes screensaver all over the ship and the holodeck program. They don’t learn anything in particular about what the sentient ship is like or wants or thinks of them, beyond the fact that it wants to suck up some particular radiation to randomly build its offspring. The entire episode is undercooked and straight up boring.

It’s as though, after seven seasons, the creatives behind The Next Generation were just going through the (loco) motions. Many of them would make the jump to Deep Space Nine or TNG’s spiritual successor, Star Trek: Voyager. But by the antepenultimate episode of the series, it’s not unreasonable to consider whether they might just be playing out the string or, more charitably, saving their powder for the finale and this cast and crew’s leap to feature films.

I don’t think I’d blame them if that were true. Churning out twenty-six episodes a season is no easy task. Doing it for seven years straight is even tougher. Not every installment is going to be a winner. But “Emergence” is the type of episode that seems less like it got derailed and more like it barely even made it out of the station.