Why "Clues" bothers me just a little bit...

[Darth_Pazuzu]

I was recently watching some of my Season 4 DVD's of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and one of the episodes I saw was Clues. While I think it's a fairly decent episode, there's something about it which kind of bothers me.

If you'll allow me to momentarily digress...

Last summer, I was all psyched up by the hype surrounding Batman: Dark Knight, and I was really eager to see Heath Ledger's posthumous performance as the Joker. While I can't say that the movie didn't deliver the goods, and was good thrilling fun for the most part, there's one aspect of the movie that kind of ticked me off: The ending. I thought that the whole thing about protecting the good name of Harvey Dent so that the citizens of Gotham would have their memory of the White Knight D.A. preserved, and Batman playing the fall guy and becoming a true outlaw, the "bad guy," as it were...well, truthfully, I found it rather unnerving and unsettling!

For the same reason, albeit to a somewhat lesser extent, I found Clues rather unsettling. Data's - and Captain Picard's - sanctioning of having the entire crew's memories of the Paxans erased just so the big, bad superpowerful xenophobic aliens would be able to keep knowledge of their existence from outsiders just doesn't really sit well with me.

I mean, why, for God's sake?! It's certainly not a Prime Directive issue, since the Paxans are so obviously advanced! And even if it's accepted that Captain Picard would assent to having the Enterprise crew's memories erased for the sake of preventing their destruction by the Paxans, there's no compelling reason why Data couldn't have filled everybody in later on when there was no threat of reprisal from the aliens! Granted, that would be deceptive to the Paxans, but they're just a bunch of uptight, xenophobic twits anyway, so who freakin' cares what they think?! Starfleet could have just been selective in who they shared information about the Paxans with and simply declared their system off limits to other vessels.

My point is, if you're going to write a story in which the truth is covered up, you had best have some morally compelling reason to back it up! The famous Deep Space Nine episode In The Pale Moonlight is also an example of a Trek story in which even worse acts - lying, cheating, bribery and murder - are committed for the sake of bringing the Romulans into the war with the Dominion. While that episode's moral relativism is not necessarily beyond argument, I believe that for the sake of preserving the Federation and winning the war, and Captain Sisko was justified - albeit just barely! - in doing what he felt had to be done. (Although it certainly didn't hurt that he had the amoral Elim Garak to do all those things that he couldn't do behind his back - which may indeed have been a kind of subconscious motivation for Sisko's working with Garak in the first place!)

Purely as a matter of principle, I prefer to know the truth. The truth may not be pretty, it may be inconvenient, and it may even be downright scary, but I'm the sort of person who would sleep better at night knowing the awful, ugly truth than I could sanctioning someone's deceiving me in order to somehow "protect" me!

But hey, that's just me!

 

[USS Excelsior]

Because Data was ordered to keep it a secret.

 

[Darth_Pazuzu]

Because Data was ordered to keep it a secret.

Very true, but somehow that particular detail doesn't really successfully resolve my personal qualms with the story.

 

[Iamnotspock]

Picard had to order Data to never reveal the truth in order to satisfy the Paxans. Once the situation was over, Data still would not have violated that order as it would've gone against his programming.

 

[Sheliak]

"Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die."

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I afgree with the OP. Plus there are some clues that they can't avoid.. like beards and plants growing. That's the point, and Picard agrees to it again I still can't figure out how they are going to "get it right" this time

 

[Timo]

Then again, what right do our heroes have to know the truth?

Don't the Paxans hold equal rights to truth, especially the truth about themselves? Our heroes are out to pillage, to take truth away from those who originally owned it. They have little justification for this pillage, except for the abstract desire to have as much truth as they can.

But no truth or other abstraction can ever be worth even a single life. If our heroes are harming the Paxans in their quest for truth, they should cease and desist - and they should lose their wrongful gains.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TheSeeker]

It's been a long time since I saw this episode but I thought they were under threat from the Paxans and the only way to stay safe was to make sure they didn't know the truth. Seems like a good reason to cover up the truth to me. Of course I could be remembering wrong.

 

[Christopher]

For the same reason, albeit to a somewhat lesser extent, I found Clues rather unsettling. Data's - and Captain Picard's - sanctioning of having the entire crew's memories of the Paxans erased just so the big, bad superpowerful xenophobic aliens would be able to keep knowledge of their existence from outsiders just doesn't really sit well with me.

I mean, why, for God's sake?! It's certainly not a Prime Directive issue, since the Paxans are so obviously advanced! And even if it's accepted that Captain Picard would assent to having the Enterprise crew's memories erased for the sake of preventing their destruction by the Paxans, there's no compelling reason why Data couldn't have filled everybody in later on when there was no threat of reprisal from the aliens! Granted, that would be deceptive to the Paxans, but they're just a bunch of uptight, xenophobic twits anyway, so who freakin' cares what they think?! Starfleet could have just been selective in who they shared information about the Paxans with and simply declared their system off limits to other vessels.

I've always felt the same way, except I was much more than a little bit bothered. This episode came out not that long after the Iran-Contra hearings, a huge scandal about a secret, illegal conspiracy engaged in by members of the Reagan and Bush (Sr.) administrations. In that climate, for TNG to do an episode suggesting that there was ever a valid reason for hiding the truth and destroying physical evidence was just... wrong. It ran counter to everything ST is supposed to be about.

There's also an enormous conceptual flaw with the story. Okay, supposedly they hide all the evidence that the crew has lost a whole day (and then a second whole day) of memory rather than just a few moments. The ship's clocks are set back to make it seem only seconds passed. Okay, fine. But what happens when the ship gets a subspace communique from Starfleet, or docks at a starbase, and they discover that the ship's clocks are two days behind the rest of the galaxy? ST has never implied that there's any kind of time-dilation effect with warp drive, so that would pretty much give away that they'd lost time.

True, it's possible that the wormhole could be blamed for sending them a day or two forward in time, but the script never addressed that. It's not an insoluble issue, but it's one the scriptwriters forgot to deal with, and that's sloppy thinking.

 

[Silvercrest]

At the end, when Picard is explaining to the Paxans that they left too many clues, and that this should be a "dry run" for the real thing, I always envision the Paxans replying, "That is what you said the last two times!" and blowing up the Enterprise anyway.

 

[Holdfast]

There's also an enormous conceptual flaw with the story. Okay, supposedly they hide all the evidence that the crew has lost a whole day (and then a second whole day) of memory rather than just a few moments. The ship's clocks are set back to make it seem only seconds passed. Okay, fine. But what happens when the ship gets a subspace communique from Starfleet, or docks at a starbase, and they discover that the ship's clocks are two days behind the rest of the galaxy? ST has never implied that there's any kind of time-dilation effect with warp drive, so that would pretty much give away that they'd lost time.

True, it's possible that the wormhole could be blamed for sending them a day or two forward in time, but the script never addressed that. It's not an insoluble issue, but it's one the scriptwriters forgot to deal with, and that's sloppy thinking.

I have to admit that this is what bugged me personally about the story when I first saw it. Hey, I can nitpick occasionally too, and this is a pretty big one.


As for the ethics of covering up evidence/truth, it's an interesting question. We assume knowing truth is good, but we each have a different version of truth. Leaving aside issues of absolute truth and just thinking practically: Picard acts to protect the lives of his crew the only way he can figure out. To him, the truth about the Paxans is worth sacrificing. Pragmatic bit of realpolitik I think, allowing him & his crew to survive and potentially do good in the future.

 

[Vic Sixx]

It bothered me too, as I've said a few other times. Picard seem to cave a little to easily, unless there was more of an argument that was edited out. Granted the Captain has the right to sacrifice his crew, but does he have the right to order them to have memories erased? I don't think so.

And the curiosity about the two day time lag would have created the mystery all over again.

 

[Christopher]

As for the ethics of covering up evidence/truth, it's an interesting question. We assume knowing truth is good, but we each have a different version of truth. Leaving aside issues of absolute truth and just thinking practically: Picard acts to protect the lives of his crew the only way he can figure out. To him, the truth about the Paxans is worth sacrificing. Pragmatic bit of realpolitik I think, allowing him & his crew to survive and potentially do good in the future.

In-story, maybe. But in the real-world context in which the episode first aired, after senior members of the Reagan administration had been exposed as complicit in a massive conspiracy and yet managed to get away with it (since both North's and Poindexter's convictions were overturned), a story endorsing the idea of covering up the truth and destroying evidence carried a disturbing ulterior meaning.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I don't see the problem here. The Paxans would have destroyed the Enterprise if the crew hadn't voluntarily hidden the truth from themselves. Covering up the truth in this case saved a thousand lives, so I consider it justified. It hurt no one, and saved the ship's crew. Win-win.

 

[Trekker4747]

Last summer, I was all psyched up by the hype surrounding Batman: Dark Knight, and I was really eager to see Heath Ledger's posthumous performance as the Joker

I know. It's astounding when people come back from the dead and play roles in movies, isn't it?

 

[Unicron]

I don't see the problem here. The Paxans would have destroyed the Enterprise if the crew hadn't voluntarily hidden the truth from themselves. Covering up the truth in this case saved a thousand lives, so I consider it justified. It hurt no one, and saved the ship's crew. Win-win.

That's how I see it. At the least, they would have taken over the ship forcibly, as Data said the crew couldn't have prevented it if their memories remained normal.

 

[Christopher]

I don't see the problem here. The Paxans would have destroyed the Enterprise if the crew hadn't voluntarily hidden the truth from themselves. Covering up the truth in this case saved a thousand lives, so I consider it justified. It hurt no one, and saved the ship's crew. Win-win.

How do we know it hurt no one? People who go to such lengths to hide the truth generally don't have benevolent motives for it. How do we know the Paxans were only motivated by isolationism? We only have their word for that, and they're a people willing to kill to keep their secrets, so we can't exactly assume they were being forthright about their motives. What if they had some more insidious reason for hiding?

Picard said in a later episode that a Starfleet officer's first duty is to the truth. There are very good reasons for that. Ignorance is dangerous. Covering up the truth may have saved the crew, but at what cost? The ending of this story was essentially a major defeat. Picard compromised his personal commitment to truth and knowledge, compromised the core principles of Starfleet and the Enterprise, in the name of mere survival. That's a sad outcome. I think the writers of this episode got so caught up in the technicalities of the mystery that they failed to think about the message they were putting across, a very un-Trekkish message that survival trumps principle and integrity. A good ST story isn't just about characters avoiding death, it's about characters standing up for what they believe in, saving the day by advancing and affirming their principles. Picard should've made a grand speech about the power of the truth and the benefits of communication and convinced the Paxans to soften their isolationist stance. The ending we got was tantamount to, say, Kirk going ahead and killing the Gorn anyway.

Besides, as I've already explained twice, my problem was about the comment the episode seemed to be making about our world. In the context of the United States of America at the tail end of the Iran-Contra scandal, when images of Ollie North and his secretary having document-shredding parties to cover up the crimes of the Reagan administration, an episode saying "destroying evidence and hiding the truth is justified" came off as a political statement that I had a huge problem with. At the very least, it was very poorly timed.

 

[Trekker4747]

I don't see the problem here. The Paxans would have destroyed the Enterprise if the crew hadn't voluntarily hidden the truth from themselves. Covering up the truth in this case saved a thousand lives, so I consider it justified. It hurt no one, and saved the ship's crew. Win-win.

How do we know it hurt no one? People who go to such lengths to hide the truth generally don't have benevolent motives for it. How do we know the Paxans were only motivated by isolationism? We only have their word for that, and they're a people willing to kill to keep their secrets, so we can't exactly assume they were being forthright about their motives. What if they had some more insidious reason for hiding?

Picard said in a later episode that a Starfleet officer's first duty is to the truth. There are very good reasons for that. Ignorance is dangerous. Covering up the truth may have saved the crew, but at what cost? The ending of this story was essentially a major defeat. Picard compromised his personal commitment to truth and knowledge, compromised the core principles of Starfleet and the Enterprise, in the name of mere survival. That's a sad outcome. I think the writers of this episode got so caught up in the technicalities of the mystery that they failed to think about the message they were putting across, a very un-Trekkish message that survival trumps principle and integrity. A good ST story isn't just about characters avoiding death, it's about characters standing up for what they believe in, saving the day by advancing and affirming their principles. Picard should've made a grand speech about the power of the truth and the benefits of communication and convinced the Paxans to soften their isolationist stance. The ending we got was tantamount to, say, Kirk going ahead and killing the Gorn anyway.

Besides, as I've already explained twice, my problem was about the comment the episode seemed to be making about our world. In the context of the United States of America at the tail end of the Iran-Contra scandal, when images of Ollie North and his secretary having document-shredding parties to cover up the crimes of the Reagan administration, an episode saying "destroying evidence and hiding the truth is justified" came off as a political statement that I had a huge problem with. At the very least, it was very poorly timed.

I like Clues. I think it's one of TNG's better episodes.

But I like your ending better. With after the first attempt, Picard delivers his speech that convinces the Paxans to change their ways and/or reconsider their isolationism.

It's also always sort of bugged me that this episode was such a "bottle episode" that they didn't even bother so much as to get a guest actor to play the Paxan and rather made them yet another non-corporeal being.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I don't see the problem here. The Paxans would have destroyed the Enterprise if the crew hadn't voluntarily hidden the truth from themselves. Covering up the truth in this case saved a thousand lives, so I consider it justified. It hurt no one, and saved the ship's crew. Win-win.

How do we know it hurt no one? People who go to such lengths to hide the truth generally don't have benevolent motives for it. How do we know the Paxans were only motivated by isolationism? We only have their word for that, and they're a people willing to kill to keep their secrets, so we can't exactly assume they were being forthright about their motives. What if they had some more insidious reason for hiding?

Then they should have *mentioned* those reasons. As it stands, there's no reason to assume the Paxans are anything other than flat-out xenophobic and paranoid; Picard is certainly not obligated to sacrifice himself, his crew and his ship to satisfy that. Assuming he couldn't simply take the ship out and *escape* the Paxans, he had every right to do what he did, given the information we saw.

 

[Timo]

Indeed. While there's something to be said about conspiracies being portrayed as negative things, it wouldn't do to categorically condemn lying and hiding of truth. Especially if it saves you from bloodshed. Ever compliment on a hideous dress or hairdo?

Timo Saloniemi