Oh hey, let’s get around to fixing that whole “The holodeck kills people” problem!

This episode is all about what I’d call “Concept Aliens.” There’s no work to make the other species relatable; the focus is almost entirely on how foreign they are. In this case, it’s the Binars. They travel in pairs and are so integrated into their computer systems (and each other) that they finish each other’s sentences and communicate in short bursts of what is apparently binary. They store anything they can’t process right this second in hard drives worn like fanny packs (which has its own plot holes, like how are they engaging in back and forth dialogue if they aren’t processing it in the moment?) and they wear the spangley metallic clothes that are apparently the dress code of the future.

Concept Aliens annoy me. Unless they’re a long established race like Klingons or Vulcans, aliens in this show have to have some kind of gimmick. Star Trek seems to like to illustrate how CRAZY and DIFFERENT other species can be, with humans of the future tending to come out as all enlightened and shit. It’s annoying and sanctimonious. I compare it to Doctor Who, which tends to show different species as just people, trying to get along with their lives. There’s a little bit of crazy and different, but there’s more focus on similarities than differences. And in Doctor Who, humans usually come out looking like vicious assholes. Somehow, this is a lot more tolerable than the smugness of the Federation. Maybe it’s because LOTS of species come out looking like assholes in Doctor Who, and no one is as smug as Riker, who seems to be the usual mouthpiece for how enlightened the future is.

Maybe I just don’t like Riker so far! (This is sacrelige, isn’t it?) I spent a good portion of this episode creeped out by Riker falling in love with conniving-but-not-murderous holodeck creation, Minuet. And by he and Picard having dueling flirtation with the holographic lady. There’s a scene in original Trek, I think it’s in “The Naked Time,” that I like to call “The Birth of Slash Fiction.” Kirk and Spock are both intoxicated by this weird “heavy water” or something, and they’re both in states of emotional turmoil, vulnerable, and in my head, I heard my squeeing, slash-happy dorm neighbors from college shouting “KISS! KISS!” when I saw it. In this episode, Riker and Picard are talking about Minuet as if she isn’t there, and both kind of flirting with her at the same time, and it’s like an uncomfortable prelude to someone’s intense erotic fiction. I would lay money on a fanfiction existing somewhere that starts with this scene and ends places I don’t want to imagine.

I can see some really good angles that could be taken with realistic holopeople. They almost but not quite touched on the notion of someone falling in love with a simulation of a real person but having Riker be unable to find Minuet again after desperately trying. There could be a good, sad SF/F romance novel in that. I’m sure they must use that later on, right?

Bits and pieces:

• Hey, it’s 1958 in the holodeck in a jazz club because cool dudes love jazz, right? And yet Minuet has like three cans of aquanet in her hair and looks like a character from Matlock, not Perry Mason. But hey, it’s Star Trek. Who needs a semblance of realism, anyway?
• “…and a ‘bone for me.”
• Seriously, what is up with the eighties and purple? Why is everything purple
• Geordi advising Data on his painting. Data’s starting to develop more, but what I really like is Geordi’s “Fuck you, man” look when Riker smirkingly says that academics would be interested in a blind man teaching an android to paint.
• How much work is it going to take to restore the computers after the Binars filled every bit of space with their vital data from their planet? And how is the computer of the Enterprise anywhere near big enough to hold all the data of a planet whose premise is that it’s people are inextricably entwined in their computers? It defies logic. Not that this series has been real keen on the whole “logic” thing up to this point.

Ultimate verdict: Not terrible, but kind of squicky in parts. I don’t like Leering Riker, and yet he keeps popping up.