Amnesia of the Future: Lonely Among Us

20th November, 2009 4 Comments

Oh conflicted reaction to this episode!  Part of me is thrilled–we’re still doing much better than The Naked Now or The Last Outpost, but watching Lonely Among Us was sort of like having a hangover that isn’t quiet bad enough to call in sick to work.

The Selay and Antican (or as I like to call them SNAKE PEOPLE! and the Riki Tiki Tavi) seem a contrived plot device.  Actually the whole episode seems really forced as a way to introduce the Sherlock Holmes obsession of Data.  The rules of horror movies should be enforced here:  don’t run upstairs when being chased by the bad guy, don’t have sex (hey, Wesley Crusher will survive horror movies!), and don’t fly through odd combinations of gas in space.  I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to work this way, but the supporting story of the SNAKE PEOPLE! and the Riki Tiki Tavi/Sherlock Holmes is much more entertaining than the main plot of “Picard turns into Emperor Palpatine.”

I am, of course, loving Data.  Brent Spineris just an amazing actor and his Sherlock Holmes obsessed android is just perfect.  There’s this magnificent irony-less subtlety to his performance.  He’s just priceless in the subtlety of silent moments–inspecting the blurp of the fish tank, chomping down on the pipe before remembering that Riker is his superior officer.  Overusing the word “indubitably.”

Speaking of which, last night I stopped off for some Indian food before making my way to an In The Flesh reading (erotic lit), and when I asked the cashier if I could get a bottle of water as well he replied, “Indubitably.”

I’m torn on the idea of whether or not I’d like living in the future.  Sure they are technically vegetarian, that’s a point in their favor.  But the fake food thing.  Thanks Eli for explaining the replicator.  I eat very little packaged goods now and rely heavily on my local farmer’s market for food–thinking about eating reconfigured matter gave me the same reaction as head Riki Tiki Tavi when Tasha and Riker explained the eating habits of the inhabitants of the Enterprise.  I also threw up a little in my mouth at the description of how the Riki Tiki Tavi eats. 

Picard’s “spacewalk” by transporting just his energy out into the gassy cloud brings us to the science questions I have.  Slightly less science-y first–do any of the crew ever get to spacewalk for real?  Because that’s the big draw of leaving Earth’s orbit for me.  If this is the closest we come, then disappointing. There will plenty of Trekkies willing to explain the more science-y second half of this:  Picard transports just his energy out into space–so shouldn’t his body, the matter portion of him, just collapse in place on the transporter since it’s not actually going anywhere?  And when Data realizes that Picard’s matter pattern should be stored in the computer’s system, does this mean that when Picard is reconfigured, it’s not really him physically?  Actually, this is true of any of them, right?  I feel like I’ve heard debates about all this before and it raises all sorts of questions about what makes a person an individual and whether or not the energy of one person is the equivalent of their soul. 

Memories of the Future:  Chapter 7

Much as the episode itself did nothing for me (other than give me a weird crush on a fictional android), so I felt about this chapter.  Interestingly, Wil Wheaton states that he doesn’t remember too much about filming Lonely Among Us, so I wonder if that is what’s coming across in his writing here. 

Sure, the synopsis of the episode is entertaining, but I didn’t get that same “I was there” reaction as I’ve gotten in other chapters, even ones where Wil Wheaton wouldn’t have been on set because Wesley Crusher wasn’t even in a particular episode. 

We are all agreed that the alternative name for Lonely Among Us is The Obvious is Really Obvious Except For When People Randomly Show Up In Sick Bay.  Because I was trying so hard to connect with the episode, I didn’t notice that bit until Wil Wheaton points out how Troi walks into sick bay with no purpose other than to give lazy writers the opportunity to show the transfer of energy from Worf to Dr. Crusher.  And, as he points out, Troi is still doing absolutely nothing with her empathy skills.  I keep being told that her character eventually gets better, but so far I think everyone who has told me this is a liar.  DO NOT LIKE TROI!

Wil Wheaton does manage to find the words to explain the way I feel about this episode in “The Bottom Line:”

Much of the dialogue, pacing, and blocking in this episode feels arbitrary to me.  Characters enter and exit scenes without any good reason, and instead of action, we have meeting after meeting after meeting, and it makes the whole thing feel confused and directionless.

Just when I was getting excited about Star Trek–thinking maybe I was going to turn into a Trekkie somewhere down the line because WOW! Where No One Has Gone was so good…we get this.  It’s such a letdown and makes the previous episode feel like a fluke.  Sherlock Holmes would indubitably think this show was destined for failure.

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