Just got finished watching this episode, and I must say... this is a top-tier Data-focused episode! Well, I'd say this is a top-tier episode period. This episode for me checks off most (if not all) the list of aspects that makes for a... I guess "good" Star Trek episode.
To recap the episode in my own words, the Sheliak apparently have a legal claim on a planet on which the residents refuse to leave and are undeterred by the threat of the Sheliak removing them by violent or even deadly means as they have no regard for human/humanoid life, and Data had been sent to that planet to try to convince them to evacuate that planet for their own safety. Except Gosheven and the other villagers are adamantly unmoved and unintimidated by the Sheliak threat and are uninterested in Data's warning... except for a woman named Ard'rian who offers to help him convince everyone else to leave and shows a strong interest in Data, even an intimate one.
What I liked most about this episode is how there's the scene where there's a meeting with the colonists, Gosheven adamantly tells Data and Ard'rian about his refusal to evacuate and how everyone else agrees with his refusal, and that Data has failed to talk them into leaving. But Data retorts that he is "reversing his defeat" as a few of them see no need to needlessly die and thus would rather leave the planet. But Gosheven is so stubborn and thin-skinned that he zaps Data with electricity, shutting him off! As Ard'rian checks on him, she's like, "Damn you, Gosheven!" I also like how one of them look in horror telling Gosheven, "You've killed him!"
Gosheven: "I've killed no one. I merely shut down a machine!"
But I point this out to highlight how fascinating it is to me that someone like Gosheven is too in his ego to accept any opposition and because he feels like Data is destroying his ego, he feels the need to destroy that opposition by shutting off Data. Like how when two people are engaged in an ego contest one person's ego is so badly damaged or destroyed that they "remove the competition" so to speak by physically attacking the opposing party. But eventually Ard'rian manages to turn Data back on with no apparent damage.
I also like the scene where Data used a phaser, that he modified, and blasted four of the colonists with it on the stun setting and used a more advanced setting to destroy part of the village, before he gives some speech about how the Sheliak will be much more dangerous and brutal, basically finally succeeding in teaching them the ultimate lesson that things, even places, can be replaced, and lives cannot, which becomes enough to convince everyone to evacuate.
The last thing I liked about this episode is the intimacy between Ard'rian and Data, if I can even call it that. First she kissed him and then after it was all said and done he kissed her.
Aside from the missed opportunity for there to have been for Data to get his taste of something as human as an intimate encounter between him and Ard'rian (which was understandable and excusable, really, as a more important story needed to be told here), I can't really think of anything else I disliked about this episode and I didn't actually dislike that, really. This was really an episode well done! Though, from what I've seen in the fanbase this episode isn't one of the loved TNG episodes as "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "The Best of Both Worlds".
To recap the episode in my own words, the Sheliak apparently have a legal claim on a planet on which the residents refuse to leave and are undeterred by the threat of the Sheliak removing them by violent or even deadly means as they have no regard for human/humanoid life, and Data had been sent to that planet to try to convince them to evacuate that planet for their own safety. Except Gosheven and the other villagers are adamantly unmoved and unintimidated by the Sheliak threat and are uninterested in Data's warning... except for a woman named Ard'rian who offers to help him convince everyone else to leave and shows a strong interest in Data, even an intimate one.
What I liked most about this episode is how there's the scene where there's a meeting with the colonists, Gosheven adamantly tells Data and Ard'rian about his refusal to evacuate and how everyone else agrees with his refusal, and that Data has failed to talk them into leaving. But Data retorts that he is "reversing his defeat" as a few of them see no need to needlessly die and thus would rather leave the planet. But Gosheven is so stubborn and thin-skinned that he zaps Data with electricity, shutting him off! As Ard'rian checks on him, she's like, "Damn you, Gosheven!" I also like how one of them look in horror telling Gosheven, "You've killed him!"
Gosheven: "I've killed no one. I merely shut down a machine!"
But I point this out to highlight how fascinating it is to me that someone like Gosheven is too in his ego to accept any opposition and because he feels like Data is destroying his ego, he feels the need to destroy that opposition by shutting off Data. Like how when two people are engaged in an ego contest one person's ego is so badly damaged or destroyed that they "remove the competition" so to speak by physically attacking the opposing party. But eventually Ard'rian manages to turn Data back on with no apparent damage.
I also like the scene where Data used a phaser, that he modified, and blasted four of the colonists with it on the stun setting and used a more advanced setting to destroy part of the village, before he gives some speech about how the Sheliak will be much more dangerous and brutal, basically finally succeeding in teaching them the ultimate lesson that things, even places, can be replaced, and lives cannot, which becomes enough to convince everyone to evacuate.
The last thing I liked about this episode is the intimacy between Ard'rian and Data, if I can even call it that. First she kissed him and then after it was all said and done he kissed her.
Aside from the missed opportunity for there to have been for Data to get his taste of something as human as an intimate encounter between him and Ard'rian (which was understandable and excusable, really, as a more important story needed to be told here), I can't really think of anything else I disliked about this episode and I didn't actually dislike that, really. This was really an episode well done! Though, from what I've seen in the fanbase this episode isn't one of the loved TNG episodes as "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "The Best of Both Worlds".
