7x05 Gambit (2)

[7.7/10] There’s still plenty of plot in the second part of the “Gambit” duology. Bad guys die. Ally betrays ally. The twists and turns still come at a regular pace. But there’s more life, more motivation, more personality behind all of it, that elevates the conclusion above the introduction.

Not for nothing, there’s also humor! Tone’s always a tricky thing, but somehow writer Ronald D. Moore and director Alexander Singer manage to include a fair amount of comic relief without weakening the tension of the ongoing threat. There’s not exactly setups and punchlines, but there’s still a sort of wry comedy to Beverly fumfering through why she needs to perform a questionable “health and safety check” on a Klingon shuttle, or Troi and Data making futile attempts at small talk with its pilot.

Even the amusing shtick at the end, where rule-bound Data tries to take Riker to the brig for being a “renegade”, is a funny chance to exhale after all the tense gamesmanship that made up the bulk of the episode, in the proud tradition of The Original Series. Do these moments make the episode? Of course not. But they make the experience feel like something other than the steady march of the plot.

To the same end, Moore and the show’s writers’ room spend more time on the characters' relationships and motivations here. Case in point, there’s a small but meaningful B-story between Data and Worf here. Worf questions Data’s orders and is flip about enacting them. The two of them have a stern but heartfelt chat about the demands of their new roles and their friendship. And in the next command decision, we see Worf struggling a bit but respecting both his new acting captain and his friend. It’s a simple but effective story, told in just a few scenes, but founded on what we know about the characters, the exigencies of the situation, and the way each of them ultimately rises to the occasion. There’s a melding of story and character here that’s otherwise missing from part one.

The same’s true aboard the mercenaries’ ship. The fraught nature of both Picard and Riker having to hide parts of who they really are in this den of vipers makes their safety a tenuous proposition and all times and keeps the personal stakes high throughout. But we don’t just see them buckling under the pressure or overcoming the danger.

We see Riker building a relationship with Baran, the pirates’ leader, playing into the role of a disgraced Starfleet officer ready to go into business for himself versus a longstanding nogoodnik who’s taken a shine to Will but has suspicions about the arrival of any unexpected good fortune. We see Picard forging an alliance with Tallera, the pointy-eared fellow “smuggler” who seems to be on to his deceptions, and has more than a few secrets herself. We not only get to know these characters better in the second half of the duology, but we see their connections and perturbations with regular members of the cast to help make all the plot developments meaningful.

The plot developments aren’t bad either! We finally up the ante ibeyond “These pirates are stealing some priceless artifacts, and that’s worth Picard and Riker risking their lives...for some reason.” It turns out the artifacts, when combined, become some sort of psionic weapon that ancient Vulcans once used to attack one another, and a set of Vulcan extremists, who want to eschew contact with any aliens, will pay top dollar for it.

There’s something there! It’s a little generic as fetch quests go, but there’s a reason “We’re looking for the ultimate weapon” is such a venerable idea in genre fiction. It’s a sturdy premise to build a story around. Adding in a political and social angle, a corner of Vulcan society ready to break away, gives it some quick ties to the broader political machinations of TNG, making this mission relevant beyond the crew of the Enterprise or the baddies who might use the artifacts for ill.

At the same time, Moore and company pepper in plenty of solid twists and turns in the narrative. Frankly, it’s probably too many, but the show manages to make it work by keeping the pace up to where we can just fly by any head-scratching developments. While Picard wants Riker to cozy up to Baran to sniff out the pirate’s plan, Baran wants Riker to cozy up to “Galen” to sniff out a mutiny and then kill him. Tallera figures out the truth about Picard, but wants to work with him since she’s secretly a Vulcan security agent.

Those twisty developments would be enough on their own, with tense moments amid all this kabuki theater and secret identities. But “Gambit pt. 2” goes a step further, finding clever ways to take Riker out of harm's way without spilling the beans to the pirates, neutralizing Baran as a threat, and ultimately saving one last twist for Tallera. It turns out that she’s a part of the separatist Vulcan sect, and wants to use the weapon for her own purposes, rather than protect it.

It’s arguably one twist too many, rendering the episode a bit overloaded and throwing on an extra act to the story more than it can support. As Picard himself admits, keeping track of the alliances, and more to the point, making them make sense with so many changes to the balance of power, leaves this one feeling jumbled. In places, “Gambit” bites off more than it can chew.

Likewise, the ending is pretty dopey. There’s hay to be made from a weapon fueled by emotional energy. But while the script tries to set things up via Picard’s (on-brand) fascination with the artifacts’ symbology, the notion that the weapon can only be defeated by calm, peaceful thoughts in its would-be victims comes out of nowhere and plays as silly. There’s not really a connection there to anything else in the episode, beyond a tenuous tie to Riker’s sense of anger at the beginning of this two-parter. But that’s long been resolved, so the away team, including Worf, being able to nigh-magically empty their minds of violent thoughts and overcome the weapon scans as convenient rather than cool.

Still, “Gambit” ends much better than it began. Even if some of the narrative choices seem a bit haywire, especially by the end, the way the conclusion is suffused with character, with laughs, with connections that are subsumed in the cloak and dagger schemes everyone is spinning, make those schemes more engaging and exciting. A good story goes a long way, but it can only get so far without the richer, more personal elements that allow it to hit home.