It seems like every so often Star Trek will do a “Make-up” show, where the make-up effect is the focus of the attention. TOS had “The Deadly Years”, DS9 had “Distant Voices”, Voyager had “Threshold”, and this was one of TNG’S. But is it any good? Let’s discuss it:
Plot Synopsis:
Five years a landing party including LaForge was investigating an abandoned outpost. The people had vanished. Five years later, that same landing party start to vanish. Geordi and his friend Suzanne are the last two left.
The Enterprise finds the shuttle with one of the missing officers, but their attempt to rescue him fails. A landing party beams down to the planet where Suzanne begins to come down with symptoms. On board the Enterprise, she keeps transforming. Geordi tries to discover what is going on even though he has begin to show signs of changing also.
Geordi escapes the ship, transforming into an alien life form. Crusher finds a parasite in Suzanne and once it’s removed she recovers. Suzanne leads an away team to rescue Geordi, almost fully transformed. She manages to reach him in time, and saves him from losing himself to the creatures.
What I Liked:
As I said this is a make-up episode, and the effects they use on Levar Burton is amazing. It’s gotta be one of the most elaborate make-up jobs in any Trek episode. I have seen this episode a few times and I still can’t believe he’s really under all of that glop. Actually it was quite extensive, lots of prosthetic!. You can find out more details on that elsewhere. Oh and kudos to the creators for remembering that in the flashback segments regarding the original mission Geordi should be wearing a red Season one version uniform. He’s even got the correct version of a phaser! Gotta love it when the creators respect continuity.
One thing this episode does great is focus on Geordi’s friendship with his old friend Susanna. They have one or two cute scene and the fact they are friends is pretty clear. Making their later scenes even more poignant and effective. And that final scene where she saves him is very well done indeed.
The mystery is uncovered pretty convincingly, and makes sense. Its honestly one of Trek’s better mysteries as we are really with LaForge the whole way. And then Crusher finishes it by finding the parasite. By the way Crusher is awesome in this episode, as she figures out what is causing Susana to transform and works to remove it.
And I would be remiss if I did not mention that the other two aliens we see at the end of the episode were played by Brian Phelps and Mark Thompson, two LA DJ’s who were famous for a bit in the early 90’s. They even had an awful and thankfully short lived TV show on NBC.
What I Hated:
This doesn’t really feel like an episode of Star Trek. It is very moody and somber, with a strange tone that feels a bit uncomfortable. It works for the episode but at the same time, when compared to other TNG episodes it makes the episode feel very odd and even out of step with an ordinary episode. Almost like they were going for a horror concept but it doesn’t really get there. So it’s somewhere in between a good sci fi story and horror, but not sure if it works as a Star Trek story. Oh and since I didn’t mention it, what is happening is the aliens reproduce by implanting a parasite in people which cause them to actually turn into the aliens losing their humanity and, of course, return to the planet compulsively.
Geordi does one of the dumbest things ever in this episode. After Susanna has started to change, LaForge continues the investigation on the holodeck. ALL BY HIMSELF. This is so weak, he knows what is going to happen and he knows that he will want to flee the ship. I get he wants to keep investigating, but have Data or someone there just in case! And what a shock, he manages to flee the ship! Oh and more silliness, of course LaForge transports himself down despite precautions. Why does the transporter and shuttle bay have overrides if they never ever work????? But Geordi isn’t the only one doing illogical things in this episode. At one point Worf and Riker go into the holodeck to look for Geordi, and Worf commands his team to search the area. Why they didn’t just turn the program off I will never know.
There’s also a bit of a missed opportunity here, the title “Identity Crisis” makes sense but we could have explored it more we don’t really understand what Geordi is going through until the last five minutes of the episode. In fact we see more of Susanna’s transformation than we see Geordi’s.
Fast Forward Moment:
There is a scene after Picard tells Riker to prepare to beam down and find Geordi. In it we see Data rigging up a U/V device while Worf and Riker discuss strategy. It feels as if they needed to fill an extra minute or two, the whole scene is pointless and could have easily been deleted.
Final Thoughts:Is it a great episode? No. Is it a bad episode? I can’t say that it is either. Guess it’s just middle of the road, watchable but nothing great.
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